Not only does Microsoft have to fight Apple and Google with their very successful iPad and Nexus tablets, but it now also has to think about Nokia as a direct competitor to the new Surface.

The Surface 2 launched recently with a Tegra 4 processor, Windows RT 8.1 and a proper hi-def screen, as well as free Office 2013. Just days later it gets Nokia’s Lumia 2520 tablet as a competitor. Nokia’s first tablet dresses in red, cyan, black and white and the thing that got our attention is the Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz, which comes with LTE enabled and all this goes for $499.

The 10.1-inch display comes with 665 nits luminosity and it’s a ClearBlack IPS unit in 1920x1080. The refresh rate is 60 Hz, Corning Gorilla Glass 2 is on top and Nokia claims it has wide viewing angles, enhanced outdoor readability and TruColor 24-bit support. The pixel density is a modest 218 ppi.

The primary camera packs a 6.7-megapixel sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and battery capacity is 8000mAh, which doesn’t sound like much. Nokia claims maximum of 25 days standby but it doesn’t predicts how long should it run on normal use.

The device measures 169x267x8.9mm and weighs 615 grams. It comes with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It supports USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 a/b/g/n but not ac. NFC paring and sharing is supported as well. It has a standard 3.5 mm audio connector, HDMI-D micro as well as 2.5 mm proprietary power connector. Of course LTE needs a micro SIM slot and depending on the country you live is, you might get the right frequency supported by Nokia but it is not stated on the website which are supported.

We like the fact that Office apps including Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote and especially Outlook are part of this tablet that runs Windows 8.1 for ARM, but we dislike the fact that none of the normal Windows applications will work on it. Dropping RT from the Windows 8.1 name might be good for marketing, but what happens when end user tries to install downloaded Winamp or any other x86 game or application that will miraculously fail to install.

Not too many applications are available for Windows RT, including some popular browsers such as Firefox and Chrome. Let’s see if Nokia can make something of this very late to market Windows tablet. We are not sure that it can – but at least Microsoft fledgling ARM platform now has two products instead of one.